Review Archive

There’s a guileless freshness about ‘Wildebeests’ an EP from Andrea Kempson. Although it comes with a certain amount of naivety, it presents six unadorned, well-constructed songs based around warmly delivered vocals, sparingly dispensed guitar augmented by cuts from bass, piano, flute and viola. There’s a softly engaging lure to the metaphor-rich lyrics and Andrea’s voice offers an attraction through its sense of fragility and simplicity to generate a quiet peace with its gentle tones. Have you heard this music before, does it sound like another album or does it just have an infinitely familiar tone? Perhaps, in the end it matters not, despite any touch of similarity ‘Wildebeests’ remains quietly alluring.

The curiously titled (never heard wildebeest migration mentioned in a song before) title track, ‘Wildebeests’ with its echoing viola gently eases-in Andrea’s style, the animal imagery continues with ‘Killer Whales’ before the stories told in‘Once’ and ‘Outside’ take a different slant, with ‘Higher Ground’ being a perfect coda. Whatever else it may be, ‘Wildebeests’ is an uncommonly compassionate and tranquil piece of work that might just be too restrained to breakthrough, hope not.